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Cursing the Darkness:

Lighting and its Effects on Virginia's Tradesmen

by Brett Charbeneau

Last night after I had put out the Candle and gone
to bed I was obliged to get up again and put
on my Cloaths and sit up all night by reason of a
snake having got under my Pillow, which made me
afraid I having no light to clear the bed of him.

The predicament of John Harrow, an indentured servant
making a long black passage through a sleepless night in 1770s Virginia,
throws a light on the life of those days. Without a candle, you made
do with the dark. Then, as now, the availability, and the nature, of
illumination determined the rhythms of the dayparticularly the
workday. But in the eighteenth century it took more than a flip of the
switch to brighten a room, which is why colonial people thought about
light in a manner we do not. Then, the availability of light controlled
man; today, man controls the availability of light.

Artificial or natural, eighteenth-century light was limited.
When that limit was passed, you waited for the sun to rise again, or
supplied yourself with the best flame you could, minding the expense.
The limits of light figured not only in the domestic chamber but in
the farm fields and the calculations of business; if a man couldnt
see, a man couldnt work. Part of a tradesmans job was to
mind the differences between natural and artificial light and try to
take advantage of both. Whether to supplement the sun with a flame meant
deciding whether the work was worth the candle and something as simple
as working by daylight still required forethought.

Interpreter Richard Frazier reads by the light of a bedchamber candle as evening falls.--
Dave Doody

One consideration was how much sunlight reached the workbench.
Joseph Moxon, who in 1683 wrote the first book in English on the
art of printing, said a printer should take care that the workroom
has a clear, free and pretty lofty Light, not impeded with
the shadow of other Houses, or with Trees.

Buildings needed to face straight in the direction of the compass
that best exposed the windows to the sun. In general, that meant
structures aligned north and south with plenty of windows on the
east and west.

Indirect sunlight was also important. Dormer windows were more than
architectural adornments. Not only did they allow light to enter a pitched
roof, the dormers interior sides helped reflect and amplify it.

William Pains Builders Companion and Workmans General
Assistant, published in 1765, gives a method to ascertain the amount
of window surface necessary to produce proper Light for the Room,
and not glare too much, nor be too dark. Pain says: The
Proportion of Windows for light to Rooms, multiply the length of the
Room by the breadth, and multiply the Height by the product of the Length
and Breadth, and out of that Product extract the Square Root, which
is the Light required.

Thus, a room twelve feet long, sixteen feet wide, and twelve feet high,
requires forty-eight square feet of window. It could be divided over
any number of windows, although Pains example suggested two, each
twenty-four square feet.

A dormer window illuminates a
book for the daytime reading of interpreter Kirsten Leslie
--Dave Doody

Tradesmen, however, rarely had the opportunity to design their
workspace from the ground up. They were often tenants who could
not afford to build their own shops and had to adapt their workspace
as best they could.

One of the simplest and most durable ways of improving illumination
in a room was to paint it a light color. Dark walls reduce light
in a room by absorbing it instead of reflecting it. Light colored
walls allowed the conservation of what illumination occurred naturally
before resorting to the expense of artificial illumination.

The way a room was arranged could also allow more efficient use
of light. In almost all surviving eighteenth-century prints, work
occurs directly under windows. Activities that required little

light usually are performed away from windows, it being easier to move
your work to the light than the light to the work.

Occupations that required close attention to detail, like copper engraving
in the production of illustrations, demanded a maximum amount of light
at all times. Brightness was crucial. The only way to judge the quality
of an engraving before printing was to view the reflection of the surface.
Direct sun was too brilliant to use on clear days, and cloudy days could
not provide light that was consistent.

Diffused light was best for this work, and the use of oiled paper screens
over windows was common. They spread the light evenly and reduced the
glare on the engraved surface making small details more apparent. Oil
lamps were used also, with smaller screens between the flame and the
copper plate.

Author Brett Charbeneau, a
former Colonial Williamsburg tradesman, hunts for type in a
box by the print shop window. -- Dave Doody

Just as there were occupations that demanded steady and therefore
artificial light, there were trades that used sunlight exclusively.
Men making gunpowder or fireworks, for instance, could not risk
an open flame. In the face of limited competition, some colonial
tradesmen may have been less inclined to suffer the dim, drear,
and dear artificial light of expensive candles if they did not
have to and to wait instead for the sun.

Shops that depended on natural light had to figure on the ratio
of day to night changing a little as seasons progressed. Because
June days in Virginia have almost half again as many hours of
daylight as December days, a job that took two winter days to
complete would probably require a day and a half in the summer.
Artisans adjusted their schedules accordingly. In 1813 Thomas
Jefferson made a chart in his farm book that recorded how the
time of year affected spinning and weaving:

Estimate of what may be spun daily:

Length of Day

Hour

Linen Task

Wool Task

Cotton Task

Jan. Dec.

9

15 oz.

12 oz.

6 oz.

Feb. Nov.

10

16 2/3

13 1/3

6 2/3

Mar. Oct.

11

18 1/3

14 2/3

7 1/3

Apr. Sep.

12

20

16

8

May Aug.

13

21 2/3

17 1/3

8 2/3

June July

14

23 1/3

18 2/3

9 1/3

Average

11 1/2

19

15 1/3

7 1/3

Junes daily production of wool was more than half again the amount
in Decembera direct correlation with daylight hours. Jeffersons
chart shows his spinners were active only when the sun was out. It seems
he sought to harmonize their schedules with sun rather than extend their
workday with artificial light. Others let the sun set their waking as
well as their working hours. Gilbert White said in 1775 that people
in Shelborne, England, burn no candles in the long days, because
they rise and go to bed by daylight.

Weather, something less reliable than nightfall and sunrise, also conditioned
sunlight. Unpredictable periods of insufficient daylight, especially
when artificial light was too dim for the job, could ruin or delay a
shops work.

When you could get it, the sun was usually the most desirable source
of light. For some close-detail work, the sun had no equal for intensity
and duration. Natural light was also free; artificial sources could
be expensive. Yet they were sometimes indispensable.

Probate inventories and other documents suggest that when the sun failed
them, colonial Virginians turned to candles more than any other source
of artificial light. Candles werent much affected by season or
weather, but they had the problem that Harrow pointed out: they had
to be lit. Matches are a nineteenth-century development. In the eighteenth
century, the nearest fireplace usually was the source of ignition. But
fires werent always readily available, as James Boswell noticed
one London summer night in 1763:

I determined to sit up all this night which I accordingly did and wrote
a great deal. About two oclock in the morning I inadvertently
snuffed out my candle, and as my fire was long before that black and
cold, I was in a great dilemma how to proceed. Down stairs did I softly
and silently step to the kitchen. But, alas, there was as little fire
there as upon the icy mountains of Greenland. I was now filled with
gloomy ideas of the terrors of the night. I was also apprehensive that
my landlord who always keeps a pair of loaded pistols by him, might
fire at me as a thief. I went up to my room, sat quietly until I heard
the watchman calling past three oclock. I then called
to him to knock at the door of the house where I lodged. He did so,
and I opened to him and got my candle re-lumed without danger.

Silversmith James Curtis uses
a candle and a magnifying globe for close work on a vessel
at his Historic Area bench

Today, almost all candles are made from paraffin, an oil developed
in the early 1860s. Colonials had to choose between wax and tallow.
Tallow candles were by far the least expensive and most common.
They were made of the fat of sheep and cows and could be manufactured
at home or purchased. Tallow candles burned unevenly, smoked and
stunk profusely, and sometimes melted in summer heat. They also
required snuffing.

Today snuff means extinguish, but not
in the eighteenth century. Benjamin Franklin bought a device in
1758 for his wife Debbie, that appears to have been what people
today consider to be a snuffer. He said it was an
Extinguisher, of Steel . . . and is of new Contrivance to
preserve the Snuff upon the Candle. The snuff
he meant was the charred end of the wick. An extinguisher, shaped
conically, put out a candle. A snuffer, made like scissors, trimmed
the wick while the flame burned.

The braiding of modern wicks, along with waxes of higher melting points,
ensures wicks are consumed as they burn. Before such improvements, wicks
had to be trimmed. Otherwise they drooped and folded against the edge
of the candle, forming a spillway. The candle guttered; the molten-fat
fuel ran down the side instead of being burned. As much as ninety-five
percent of a tallow candle could run away if it was not regularly snuffed.

A snuffed candle did not go out but burned brighter, unless you snuffed
too exuberantly and ended up, as Boswell did, snuffing out
the flame. Wax candles did not need to be snuffed so often as tallow
candles because the wax did not melt as fast. They were produced from
beeswax taken from the honeycomb, bayberries taken from the bush, or
spermaceti taken from the sperm whale, and were more expensive than
tallow. No matter the candle chosen, it was hardly the bright, maintenance-free,
cost-effective solution against darkness to which the twenty-first century
is accustomed.

Beeswax could be left untended for long periods because its melting
point is higher than tallow and bayberry. Bayberry candles were the
second most expensive but almost as popular in the colonies as tallow.
This may have been because of their better light or because of their
perfume. Spermaceti candles were the most dear and beyond the reach
of most people like tradesmen. But a surprising number of shops seem
to have gotten along with no candles at all.

Of 134 probate inventories for tradesmen from all thirteen colonies,
more than seventy percent mention lighting equipment. More than half
of these men kept artificial lighting around either as a primary source
or just in case. But more than twenty-nine percent of the inventories
show no such equipment at all.

The listing of an object in an inventory doesnt tell how, or
if, that object was used. But almost one third of these inventories
dont mention so much as a candlestick. That suggests that those
tradesmen waited on the sunmuch as John Harrow did that night
so long ago.

With this article, Brett Charbeneau,
a former Colonial Williamsburg tradesman, makes his journal debut.